Brachycera

The Asilidae are the robber fly family, also called assassin flies. They are powerfully built, bristly flies with a short, stout proboscis enclosing the sharp, sucking hypopharynx. The name "robber flies" reflects their expert predatory habits; they feed mainly or exclusively on other insects and, as a rule, they wait in ambush and catch their prey in flight.

The Brachycera are a suborder of the order Diptera. It is a major suborder consisting of around 120 families. Their most distinguishing characteristic is reduced antenna segmentation.

The Bombyliidae are a family of flies, commonly known as bee flies. Some are colloquially known as bomber flies. Adults generally feed on nectar and pollen, some being important pollinators. Larvae are mostly parasitoids of other insects.

The Acroceridae are a small family of odd-looking flies. They have a hump-backed appearance with a strikingly small head, generally with a long proboscis for accessing nectar. They are rare and not widely known. The most frequently applied common names are small-headed flies or hunch-back flies. Many are bee or wasp mimics. Because they are parasitoids of spiders, they also are sometimes known as spider flies.

Athericidae is a small family of flies known as water snipe flies or ibis flies. They used to be placed in the family Rhagionidae, but were removed by Stuckenberg in 1973. They are now known to be more closely related to Tabanidae. Species of Athericidae are found worldwide.

Orthorrhapha is a circumscriptional name which historically was used in entomology for an infraorder of Brachycera, one of the two suborders into which the order Diptera, the flies, are divided. As the group was paraphyletic, it has not been used in classifications in the last decade, and is effectively obsolete. However, many catalogs, checklists, and older works still contain the name. The taxa that used to be in the Orthorrhapha now comprise all of the infraorders in Brachycera excluding the Muscomorpha (= "Cyclorrhapha").

insect anatomy term; simple or variously modified apical or subapical bristle, arising from the third antennal segment